Additional $100,000 needed to subsidize travel and accommodation

A man participates in ceremony before a march to start the first day of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into the Indian Residential School system in Montreal last April. Vancouver’s event starts Wednesday. (File photo)

Photograph by: Phil Carpenter
, The Gazette

About 180 residential school survivors may not get the chance to attend the Truth and Reconciliation Commission event in Vancouver unless another $100,000 is found to subsidize outstanding requests for help with travel and accommodation.

A total of $250,000 has already been allocated to about 500 applicants who asked for subsidies to attend the event, which takes place Wednesday to Saturday at the Pacific National Exhibition. The deadline for applications was Wednesday, Sept. 11.

But additional funding is needed to help subsidize travel and accommodation for the remaining applicants, said Richard Jock, vice-president of policy, planning and strategic services for the First Nations Health Authority.

“We have got 682 applications,” he said. “The $250,000 won’t cover all 682. It’ll cover about 500. We have at least 180 that are still unmet.”

He said the FNHA has put in requests for more money but hadn’t heard anything official by Friday.

Sources it’s seeking money from include corporate sponsors as well as the provincial government, Aboriginal Affairs and churches.

Subsidies range from $250 to $1,000 depending on the distance from Vancouver. Applications were filled on a first come, first served basis.

“It’s really an important event and an important point in the history of residential schools,” Jock said.

“I think it will be really great to have really good participation from the first nations people. It is also an opportunity for non-first nations people to find out about residential schools and be part of the path forward and recognize that there is still work to do.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established as a result of the 2007 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the largest class action lawsuit in the country’s history. Its budget is about $58 million.

The TRC has been holding hearings across the country to educate Canadians about the history of Indian Residential Schools and hear statements from residential school survivors. The Vancouver hearing is the sixth of seven national events. The last one is in Edmonton in March.

The TRC doesn’t fund or deal with any requests for travel and accommodation. Money for survivors to attend the TRC national events was provided by Aboriginal Affairs and church donations. It is administered separately. The First Nations Health Authority is allocating money to survivors attending the TRC in Vancouver.

Starting in the 1870s, about 150,000 indigenous, Metis and Inuit children were taken and placed in 130 residential schools across the country. The last school closed in 1996.

Most were taken against their parents’ wishes. They were also forbidden to speak their language or practice their culture. An estimated 80,000 are still alive.

Mavis Jeffries is from Gitsegukla near Hazelton, about 1,300 km north of Vancouver. She was one of the applicants who hadn’t heard as of Friday morning whether she would receive a subsidy.

In the event she didn’t get support, Jeffries was selling bannock and cedar bark weaving at a stand by the side of Highway 16 to raise money. On Thursday, she earned $113.

Late Friday afternoon, she got word that her application for a $1,000 subsidy was approved.

She plans to travel with her granddaughter Katherine Scow by train to Prince George and then take the bus to Vancouver.

“I live a simple humble life,” she said by phone. “I live out in the bush. I’m not wrapped up in the materialistic world.”

Jeffries said she spent six years at St. Mary’s Indian Residential School in Mission. Taking part in the TRC in Vancouver is important for her, she said.

“It’s the first time that we’re all getting together as survivors,” she said. “That’s the way I see it. We have no political agenda. We just want to go as a group and do something good together for once. We don’t want to go there and rip our guts out. We did that. This is to do what it says: reconciliation. That’s where we’re at, I guess.”

A man participates in ceremony before a march to start the first day of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into the Indian Residential School system in Montreal last April. Vancouver’s event starts Wednesday. (File photo)

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